How to frame the affordable housing conversation
Jonathan Knopf
Executive Director for Programs
(As explained by Homer.)
📚 Know your facts and history
🔨 Focus on solutions
📣 Rethink how you talk (then think again)
Your home is affordable if you pay no more than 30 percent of your gross income on housing costs.
Your home is affordable if it is subsidized by a public program to reduce your housing costs.
Your home is affordable if you feel it is safe, secure, healthy, and within your budget.
Rising interest rates
Labor and material costs
Restrictive land use policies
Lagging wages
Workforce shortages
Private equity acquisitions
Accelerating prices reflect lack of supply across the spectrum.
Long-term shifts in federal policy place increasing responsibilities on states and local communities.
It’s hard to plan for the future when we’re still solving the past.
Increase supply:
Manage demand:
Everyone thinks
they’re an expert…
Frames are sets of choices about how information is presented. Effective framing requires:
A message backfires when it reinforces the audience’s existing biases, rather than changing them…
…even when contradictory evidence is provided.
We’re here to help:
jonathan@housingforwardva.org
housingforwardva.org
@housingforwardva
@housingforwardva
@housingfwdva
SAW Housing Summit | October 11, 2023